Wonders of the World: A Guide to the Man-Made Treasures of Civilization

Which city claims to be oldest in the world? What is the largest construction ever built by human hands? Who created a fantastic fairy-tale castle in order to relive a romantic medieval legend before he finally went mad and drowned himself? The answers to these and many other questions can be found in this book. Each entry includes location details, a description of the site and a panel of additional information. For easy reference, the book is divided into continents, each with its own location map and introductory feature, and the entries run in chronological sequence within each continent. A hundred of the world's most spectacular monuments are described. Enigmatic megaliths, such as Stonehenge and the Easter Island statues, invite conjecture but have not yet yielded up their age-old secrets. Exquisite edifices like St Peter's in Rome rub shoulders with the surreal structure of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The stark outline of the Great Pyramid at Giza contrasts with the extravagant opulence of Hearst's Castle in California. Feats of engineering are represented with the Trans-Siberian Railway, the longest in the world, and Japan's Seto Ohashi Suspension Bridge, the cable of which is enough to circle the earth three times.